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ACT English 1.6 Passage Drill 265 Views
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Description:
ACT English: Passage Drill 1, Problem 6. Subject-verb agreement with some commas thrown in to the mix.
Transcript
- 00:03
Here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by 'fibrous husk.'
- 00:07
A term which...has kind of ruined our appetite for coconut.
- 00:24
How would you correct this underlined segment from the passage, if at all?
- 00:28
coconut, and all drupes, have
- 00:31
And here are the potential answers:
Full Transcript
- 00:37
The first thing to think about here is subject-verb agreement.
- 00:40
Believe us, when the subject and verb don't agree, the rest of the sentence suffers.
- 00:43
And then nobody's happy.
- 00:45
Here's the basic principle: when a subject is singular, the verb should be singular,
- 00:49
and when the subject is plural, the verb should be plural.
- 00:53
For example, we wouldn't say, "The monkey throw the coconut at the tourists," because
- 00:57
in this case "monkey" is singular and "throw" is plural.
- 01:01
Instead, we'd make the subject and verb match by rendering them both singular: "The
- 01:05
monkey throws the coconut at the tourists."
- 01:06
Or, we could also make them both plural: "The monkeys throw coconuts at the tourists."
- 01:11
Simple, right? Sure, but this question has another trick up its sleeve...
- 01:14
We also notice that "and all drupes" is separated by commas, signaling that it's
- 01:19
non-essential information to the rest of the sentence.
- 01:21
As such, we can ignore it when considering important questions like subject-verb agreement.
- 01:26
The subject of this sentence is the singular word "coconut," not the plural word "drupes."
- 01:31
Therefore, we know we need a singular verb to match.
- 01:35
Since choices (A), (C), and (D) all use the plural verb "have," we can knock them
- 01:39
out at the same time.
- 01:40
This leaves us with choice (B), the correct answer.
- 01:42
Yeah, it sounds weird because the plural noun "drupes" appears right before the singular verb "has."
- 01:47
However, the real subject of "has" is "coconut," which is singular. So... "has" is indeed the
- 01:52
correct verb here.
- 01:54
We think we'll celebrate by putting the lime in the coconut...
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